Nouvelle Prague

Daniel Antal, CFA

8/11/2019

Nouvelle Prague

Maintaining a Full-time Musician Career in Czechia

It is more difficult to sustain a career in Czechia, because of a less concert opportunities, less royalties, and less grants are available.

Decision Tree: What is Needed in Czechia and Austria to Sustain a Full-Time Music Career

Decision Tree: What is Needed in Czechia and Austria to Sustain a Full-Time Music Career

How Do Musicians Live?

Subjective Income of Musicians & General Population

Musicians have more financial risk and uncertainty than the typical person in almost all countries.

Income Composition of Musicians

Digital sales, labels and publisher revenues are particularly week in Czechia. This is a sign of an underdeveloped market with little value added services.

The Three Income Stream Model

Complex Careers: Artist, Technical & Managerial Roles

Expectations

Life Satisfaction

Live Music Stream

Value of Concerts

Audience Sizes

Audience Purchasing Power

The recreational and cultural budget of Czech households, and their spending on event tickets is somewhere below the medium level of the EU.

Audience Demography

Audience Demography - Static

Seasonality of Concert Demand

Recorded Music Stream

  • Lower purchasing power than in West and North, coupled with ⯆ less willingness to pay at all, private copying is more prevalent (in fact, we measured rising euro values)
  • Weaker streaming markets, reliance on public performance royalties and PCR (“blank media levies”)
  • ⯆ Royalty gap - by all benchmarks, royalty levels are lower in the CEE than in the North and West.

Willingness & Ability To Purchase

Low Royalty Levels

Streaming Markets: What Market Players Know

  • The Global Market Report covers total market revenues and dollar/dollar growth rates at last years’ (!) exchange rates
  • European stakeholders are affected by exchange rate changes
  • Subscription fee in the countries where they sell, mainly the domestic country; subscriber numbers in the countries where they sell, mainly again the domestic country
  • Repertoire competition in the countries where they sell, because that determines the monthly stream price in the local currency.
  • So how these are affecting an Austrian, Albanian, Czech or Slovenian producer, performer or composer?

Streaming Markets: CEEMID Indices

Music Exports

Market Share at Home

This year Czech producers had a strong summer season on Spotify. This strength is critical to build larger audiences.

Market Share Abroad

Currently, Czechia has only one strong export market: Slovakia. Beyond the former Czechoslovakia there are no real success stories this year. Country of origin in squares, export market on colored dots and lines.

European Export Origins To European Charts

Better Regulation & Granting

  • The ⯆ DSM Directive is a once in a decade opportunity to get proper compensation for home copying and to reduce the value gap; this is the most urgent task.
  • The proposed Live Music Act could reduce the regulatory burden on concert and festival promoters, and create an umbrella for safety, noise, and other regulations.
  • The overhaul of the EU VAT system is a great opportunity to change the balance of tax burden from higher value-added services such as music to lower value-added ones such as car manufacturing.
  • Tackling double taxation is a key to more profitable foreign tours.

DSM Directive

One significant cause of the low royalty levels is the lack of adequate compensation for home copying and the value transfer to media platforms such as YouTube.

Example of Unlicensed Music Market Share (randomized based on real CEE results)

Example of Unlicensed Music Market Share (randomized based on real CEE results)

Development Program

  • All Czech music industry stakeholders are micro- or small enterprises, and they are lacking human resources, market research and innovation departments, competences. They can only become competitive in Europe if they join forces, like in more collaborative countries.
  • SoundCzech, CEEMID and state51/CI formed a ⯆ Research Consortium to build up a comprehensive research program. This Consortium is open for all Czech stakeholders.
  • We would like to facilitate building ⯆ joint strategic HR programs for the industry, particularly to help the building of lifelong learning among music professionals.
  • Our first development priority is the creation of a ⯆ broad music education programme.

Mapping the Industry

Joint Market Research and R&D

  • We would like to adopt models used in other CEE markets to critically review the value of royalties and whenever possible, to increase them in line with European benchmarks and jurisprudence.
  • We would like to train algorithms and provide advanced analytics for SoundCzech, labels, publisher and concert promoters about contestable, profitable foreign markets.
  • One aim of this research program is to develop strategic, effect and impact indicators to measure the development and make sure that the right direction is kept. This is also necessary for better grants.
  • By combining data assets, research capacities we hope to provide stakeholders with better prbetter advocacy tools.

Joint strategic HR functions

  • A higher level of professionalization is not possible without building collaborative strategic HR functions (such as skills measurement, skill development programs, programs for life-long learning.)
  • Our mapping of industry roles and hard data is a first step in this field, but stakeholders must organize themselves in the social dialogue and find suitable organization to support the career choices of young people and ensure continued skills growth.

Supporting a broad music education programme

  • Our development program puts music education (among primary and secondary school pupils), informal music learning (mainly among secondary school and college level students) and advocating among the general public at the top priority level.
  • Our research shows that only better music education, better participation in music and a better understanding of modern music can provide a sustainable basis for development.

The Author

Creating Better Statistics

CEEMID has been doing what Eurostat is doing, often years earlier: revisiting newly available open data sources, and creating new regional and national data products.

⎘ Zoom into the presentation online ⎘ read more: Creating better national cultural statistics with Eurobarometer datasets and ESSNet-Culture technical recommendations

Thanks to Experts and Innovators in Digital Music

Consolidated Independent supported the making of this report. CI is the market leader in managed services for the digital music industry, connecting the best independent music with the opportunities of the global market.

Special thanks to the data science team: Theo Gardner, Andy McFarland & Jerome Wynne for data preparation and advice.

Feedback & Questions: danielantal.eu

Contact: danielantal.eu - linkedin - github - dataverse

Topics: royalty valuation - private copying - grant design - policy advocacy - ceemid observatory